Feeding Jack the baby lamb
I knew I was in trouble when I received a text from Rick that said, “We have a new baby.”
When I got home I found Rick sitting on the front deck, holding a very small lamb in his arms. Its head was resting peacefully on Rick’s shoulder.
Rick looked up and smiled, “Isn’t he just the cutest thing you’ve ever seen?”
I sighed. “And just how did this lamb end up in your arms?”
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Sheep in front of the olive grove
Podcast available.
“There’s a sheep down in your paddock,” our neighbor Jim said over the phone. He’d been working along the fenceline when he saw the sheep. “It looks pretty sick,” he said.
I immediately called Hamish.
Hamish is the stock agent who leases our paddocks to graze his sheep and cattle. He’s in his mid 60s, I’d say, and he’s got a broad New Zealand accent and a gravelly voice. A man of few words, he’s nevertheless friendly in a low-key, Kiwi farmer kind of way.
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Petting newly shorn Sweetie
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We have a new sheep at our place. We call her Sweetie because she really is sweet. But she has a little problem.
She arrived about three months ago when Hamish, the stock agent, brought about 20 new sheep to graze in our paddocks. “One’s a pet sheep,” he said. “Belongs to my sister. That one’s never going to the butcher.”
At first the new sheep were down in the paddock beyond the driveway and the row of gum trees. I didn’t see them much. But after a while Hamish moved them into the paddock where the chicken run is. That’s when I got to know them.
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Because we lease our paddocks to a stock agent, we’ve seen a variety of cattle and sheep come and go on our property.
Being city boys, one animal has always seemed the same as another to us. One cow, however, has been a standout. She not only made an indelible impression on us, but she left Rick with an ongoing remembrance in the form of a dull ache in his side when it rains.
We named her Evil Cow.
Local farmers say cattle are smart. One farmer once told me he’d actually seen a cow push another cow into an electric fence just to see if it was on. Before I’d met Evil Cow, I didn’t believe that such calculated bovine treachery was possible.
Let’s just say that I believe it now.
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It all started with a ram. At the end of last summer, in late February, Hamish said, “I’m going to bring over a ram.”
Stockyard full of sheep
Hamish is the stock agent who grazes his sheep and cattle in our paddocks. We were standing at the fence, looking out at his 30 or so ewes that were grazing in our olive grove at the time. Hamish has a friendly smile, but he says very little. “You’ll see lambs out there in the spring,” he added. Then he nodded and walked away.
We’d never had lambs in our own paddocks before, and we couldn’t wait.
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Since moving to the country I’ve learned that sometimes smart cattle and sheep perform the farm equivalent of a prison break – with one key difference. Instead of breaking out, they break in.
After work one evening last week, I was on my way to the chook house to collect the day’s eggs when I came across two cows in the backyard. They were just beyond the laundry line, clearly on the wrong side of the fence.
Of course I did what any level-headed city boy would do upon coming face to face with two large, beastly escaped convict cows by the laundry line. I turned around and ran the other way.
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Rick and I each picked up a long stick on the way down to the bottom paddock.
The bottom paddock: scene of the crime
We were about to chase some sheep off our property, and if one thing was certain it was that we had absolutely no idea what we were doing.
This was during our first summer here, when we were even less experienced at country life than we are now — if that’s at all possible.
But how hard can chasing sheep be? They’re just sheep. They’re fat and slow and stupid. Right?
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Podcast available.
House and the footbridge to the top paddock
A group of six of our city friends helped us move out to the country. That was back in October 2006. It was a beautiful day, and it felt like a party.
Nobody wanted to drive a rented truck over the treacherous Rimutaka Hill Road, so Rick and I hired movers to move our big things like the bed, sofa, washer and dryer. The rest of our stuff we piled into everyone’s cars and drove over the Hill together, convoy style.
Our city friends were all people we’d met since arriving in New Zealand two years before. They were an odd mix perhaps, but went together well – Kiwis and Brits, straight and gay, Quakers and not religious at all. To them we were the gay Americans from Tokyo, city boys through and through. What were we doing, they wondered, moving out to 20 acres in the country?
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